The Travis Corner

Amazoniac

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Meant to:
- Inflate his ego
- Of course, kill his free time
- Share tips that can help us become him
- Share stuff from private classes that don't fit anywhere
- Last and least, ask random or more personal questions that don't belong elsewhere

I'll start with one. You mentioned that you're a writer, where else can we find your writings?
 
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Nobody is more awesome than Travis in being Travis

He is the finest Travis on the planet to inhabit these fora.

I am in awe of a lot of people here, but Travis is on the short list of being incredibly wonderful.

Thank you Travis!
 
L

lollipop

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@Travis has already taught me sooooo much, I feel both grateful and blessed. Question do you have all of your posts and replies copied and saved somewhere? I see some sort of awesome investigative journal or book in the making.
 

Travis

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To Travis: How can a chemistry-illiterate person learn the basics?
The first step is to find books that won't insult you with cartoonish illustrations. These ones below are safe:

Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol I (2016).
Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol II (2016).

But I can't find .pdf files for many other decent books. There is a website called scribd.com that allows to you read four books at $7.99 per month. There you can find books numbering in the tens of thousands. I'm fairly certain they have Linus Pauling's book on general chemistry, as well as all the books written by Albert Szent‐Györgyi:

Pauling, Linus. "General chemistry." (1954).
Szent-Györgyi, Albert. "Bioenergetics." (1957).
Chemistry is no small subject, and people tend to specialize. Other areas relevant to biochemistry are photochemistry, enzyme kinetics, and genetic engineering. The genetic engineering book is a good primer for reading experimental articles dealing with nucleic acids, to know what they're doing and why. The book below is actually quite simple:

Nicholl, Desmond ST. An introduction to genetic engineering. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Bisswanger, Hans. Enzyme kinetics: principles and methods. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

There's a few .pdf files you can find just scattered around the internet, but a website like scribd.com can really increase the silicon library.

I'll start with one. You mentioned that you're a writer, where else can we find your writings?
They are anonymous and sporadically distributed throughout the internet. If I ever write something longer than an article I'll let you know, but so far I'm concerned with reading articles on sci‐hub. I was thinking about the Mead acid, and what function cyclooxygenase would have for a person not eating linoleic acid. There has to be a cyclooxygenase product of the Mead acid...

Question do you have all of your posts and replies copied and saved somewhere? I see some sort of awesome investigative journal or book in the making.
You'd have to crawl through my comment history. When I need to look for a previous comment, even I have to look through my own comment history. I find writing helps to consolidate any information that I've read, and keeps the articles around for quick reference. Just today: I was looking at the twenty or so articles on histamine I still had on my browser and had to summarize them somewhere. It's as if the writing turns the articles into a final synthesis, or information condensed small enough to keep in my memory for awhile.

Now I can close those articles on histamine and move on to something else.

I think one of these days I ought to buy some tryptophan, histamine, and tyrosine to be certain what the neurotransmitters feel like. I know both ingested tryptophan and hisitadine turn into their corresponding neurotransmitters in the brain. Levodopa is usually given as precursor to dopamine, but I think tyrosine should work as well.

I actually wanted to ask him what his diet is like. Not sure if it's been asked already @Travis
This week I have spinach, kale, coconuts, almonds, dates, pineapples, coffee, and cigarettes. I have been experimenting with eggs, and have determined that the protein is safe. However, linoleic acid represents roughly 20% of the fatty acids; this is no good. I feel there is also a subtle serotonin spike from the high tryptophan, something which doesn't seem productive. Almonds only have about 3% linoleic acid (as a fraction of total fatty acids) and what I consider a better amino acid ratio; tryptophan and methionine are the limiting amino acids.

I do remember getting that feeling from eating cooked kidney beans in a can a few years ago, something which had been lying around. I think cooking may increase amino acid absorption leading to a serotonin spike in high‐tryptophan foods. This may not be noticeable in people always eating cooked foods.

Serotonin, it appears to me, can make a person both happy but sort‐of apathetic. It's almost like I stopped caring about certain things, and had become almost unprincipled and mentally lazy (although not physically lazy). Serotonin now makes me think of Hilary Clinton for some reason, but I should buy some tryptophan to confirm the effect. It would be nice to be able to map serotonin, histamine, and dopamine onto sensations—and perceptions—to be more aware of the neurological effects from food.
 
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Dhair

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The first step is to find books that won't insult you with cartoonish illustrations. These ones below are safe:

Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol I (2016).
Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol II (2016).

But I can't find .pdf files for many other decent books. There is a website called scribd.com that allows to you read four books at $7.99 per month. There you can find books numbering in the tens of thousands. I'm fairly certain they have Linus Pauling's book on general chemistry, as well as all the books written by Albert Szent‐Györgyi:

Pauling, Linus. "General chemistry." (1954).
Szent-Györgyi, Albert. "Bioenergetics." (1957).
Chemistry is no small subject, and people tend to specialize. Other areas relevant to biochemistry are photochemistry, enzyme kinetics, and genetic engineering. The genetic engineering book is a good primer for reading experimental articles dealing with nucleic acids, to know what they're doing and why. The book below is actually quite simple:

Nicholl, Desmond ST. An introduction to genetic engineering. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Bisswanger, Hans. Enzyme kinetics: principles and methods. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

There's a few .pdf files you can find just scattered around the internet, but a website like scribd.com can really increase the silicon library.

They are anonymous and sporadically distributed throughout the internet. If I ever write something longer than an article I'll let you know, but so far I'm concerned with reading articles on sci‐hub. I was thinking about the Mead acid, and what function cyclooxygenase would have for a person not eating linoleic acid. There has to be a cyclooxygenase product of the Mead acid...

You'd have to crawl through my comment history. When I need to look for a previous comment, even I have to look through my own comment history. I find writing helps to consolidate any information that I've read, and keeps the articles around for quick reference. Just today: I was looking at the twenty or so articles on histamine I still had on my browser and had to summarize them somewhere. It's as if the writing turns the articles into a final synthesis, or information condensed small enough to keep in memory for awhile.

I think one of these days I ought to buy some tryptophan, histamine, and tyrosine to be certain what the neurotransmitters feel like. I know both ingested tryptophan and hisitadine turn into their corresponding neurotransmitters in the brain. Levodopa is usually given as precursor to dopamine, but I think tyrosine should work as well.

This week I have spinach, kale, coconuts, almonds, dates, pineapples, coffee, and cigarettes. I have been experimenting with eggs, and have determined that the protein is safe. However, linoleic acid represents roughly 20% of the fatty acids; this is no good. I feel there is also a subtle serotonin spike from the high tryptophan, something which doesn't seem productive. Almonds only have about 3% linoleic acid (as a fraction of total fatty acids).

I do remember getting that feeling from eating cooked kidney beans in a can a few years ago, something which had been lying around. I think cooking may increase amino acid absorption leading to a serotonin spike in high‐tryptophan foods.

Serotonin, it appears to me, can make a person both happy but sort‐of apathetic. It's almost like I stopped caring about certain things, and had become almost unprincipled and mentally lazy (although not physically lazy). Serotonin now makes me think of Hilary Clinton for some reason, but I should buy some tryptophan to confirm the effect. It would be nice to be able to map serotonin, histamine, and dopamine onto a feeling so you can be more aware of how foods are having effects.[/user]
It seems that most of the tryptophan in eggs is in the whites, no?
When did you first become aware of Ray Peat and which aspects of his work/writings do you most agree with ?
 
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@Travis What do you think is the root cause of dandruff? Why don't you drink milk or do other peaty things? The second one might be a loaded question, so feel free to ignore that one, if you even want to reply to me lol, anyway I'm going to go through your posts, I read this thread and thought, I have no idea who travis is, I thought this was some kind of troll at first until I started going through your comment history, pretty interesting take you have on things... I read your hairloss post, you seem to have a lot of suggestions in regards to the pharm areas, which is why I was going to ask about the diet part, PGD2 seems to be a problem of cortisol from your posts, but why not follow peat's suggestions to eliminating cortisol in the form of sugar, b vitamins, enough protein, etc.
 

x-ray peat

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@Travis, I too appreciate all the insight and research your bring to the forum. I am curious what your background/training is in. I think you had mentioned before that you were self taught, and if so that is an impressive amount of knowledge you have brought together by yourself. And if not, it's still impressive, especially that you have managed to reject so much of the dogma and bs taught in school.
 

papaya

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Joined
Mar 2, 2016
Messages
305
Meant to:
- Inflate his ego
- Of course, kill his free time
- Share tips that can help us become him
- Share stuff from private classes that don't fit anywhere
- Last and least, ask random or more personal questions that don't belong elsewhere

I'll start with one. You mentioned that you're a writer, where else can we find your writings?
haha, i love this! i just discovered travis yesterday & i'm already completely obsessed with him! i'll def be hanging in this corner often.
 

Travis

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It seems that most of the tryptophan in eggs is in the whites, no?
Yes, but so is most of the protein. The yolk appears to be mostly fatty acids and sterols.
When did you first become aware of Ray Peat and which aspects of his work/writings do you most agree with ?
I started reading his articles about ten years ago. The thing I liked most about them was how he freely talked about the fallibility of scientific models and the terrible logic behind some popular beliefs; if this is what is really going on, and I think it is, it makes you wonder: 'Who guards the guards?' It seems there's a small group of people—like Ray Peat, Niels Harrit, Gilbert Ling, and Terrence McKenna—who are perceptive enough to see things others can't, or won't.

He also has interesting things to say in general. The only articles I hadn't read back then were the ones dealing with estrogen, but he had added more since then. Perhaps I will start reading some of his newer ones pretty soon . . .

I think you had mentioned before that you were self taught,
I've taken quite a few chemistry and physics classes, but no biochemistry classes. I don't know if it's even worthwhile since biochemistry is constantly changing and the textbooks do not keep up. Some articles on sci‐hub are like textbook chapters, like this one here:


Freeman, Marc E. "Prolactin: structure, function, and regulation of secretion." Physiological reviews (2000)

...or any of those 60+ page Physiological Review articles. It think the journal articles are the best things to read, since most of the textbook information is fundamentally‐derived from experimental articles. Often times there are competing theories which aren't given time in places such as those, whose authoritarian bias presents a view of false conformity and unanimous adherence. These articles can be worth reading, and logic should be paramount; some persistent ideas need to be discarded. There are many common beliefs in biochemistry and medicine that are provably false, yet still persist.

The biochemistry books may be flawed at times, and annoying, but history textbooks probably give enough false accounts to give someone an aneurysm.

And although the false models are the most interesting, and can be attacked for sport, I think most (bio)chemistry still appears about to be true—perhaps like ~90%.
 
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What-a-Riot

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"Almonds only have about 3% linoleic acid (as a fraction of total fatty acids) " @Travis

Where are you getting this number? Most of the sources I can find say linoleic acid is 12-13% of the total mass and makes up over 50% of the fatty acids
 
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I disagree with @Travis if he is saying that linoleic acid is the only real danger from PUFAs, as I think he has asserted.

Other PUFAs produce lipid peroxidation I'm sure and that is a bad thing.
 

Tarmander

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Have you ever read an anesthesiology text book, and if so does it contradict most of what Ray talks about?
 
OP
Amazoniac

Amazoniac

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One of my hobbies on the forum is to distract Travisord from his actual interests.
__
Let's start a prediction game in which each member has to guess how long for him to reach the 500-alerts-a-day glory/terror mark. Opening a supplement company in the meantime would be discounted. :):
 
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Koveras

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Levodopa is usually given as precursor to dopamine, but I think tyrosine should work as well.

I've heard of some individuals using mucuna pruriens as a source of levodopa, but my impression was that this was not available centrally without a dopa decarboxylase inhibitor. Not sure if there are any benefits to increasing peripheral levels of dopamine...

Haidut has mentioned light exposure and B6 as being relevant to the formation of dopamine from tyrosine.

Tyrosine administration enhances dopamine synthesis and release in light-activated rat retina.
Light stimulates tyrosine hydroxylase activity and dopamine synthesis in retinal amacrine neurons.
 

Travis

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I disagree with @Travis if he is saying that linoleic acid is the only real danger from PUFAs, as I think he has asserted.

Other PUFAs produce lipid peroxidation I'm sure and that is a bad thing.
Yeah; all polyunsaturated fatty acids should contribute to lipofuscin and other eicosanoids, but linoleic acid is unique. I always try to stress making the distinction between linoleic acid and the others.

Meta‐reviews of all the rat–cancer feeding studies have always shown corn oil to be the most carcinogenic, and linoleic acid most dangerous when analyzing the individual fatty acids individually. Most sources state that linoleic acid alone is precursor for arachidonic acid, but also that arachidonic acid is the only precursor for prostaglandins. But just yesterday, I had come across this paragraph:

'The preferred substrates of COX contain at least three double bonds in well-defined positions. These are dihomogammalinolenic, arachidonic, and eicosapentaenoic (EPA) acids, which contain 3, 4, and 5 double bonds, respectively. Other fatty acids lacking the three double bonds in the required positions can be oxygenated by COX to hydroperoxy fatty acids, but not to PGs. Thus, Mead acid (C20:3n-9) is transformed to 13-hydroxy-5,8,11-eicosatrienoic acid by COX-1, and there are many exciting new transformations of different new substrates of COX enzymes, and particularly of COX-2, as discussed below.' ―Serhan

Which is an unusual because he states that eicosapenaenoic acid is a substrate for cycooxygenase, and thereby implies that it becomes a prostaglandin. He appears to be correct, and is talking about prostaglandin E₃. However, this appears to be a paper tiger:

'In addition to reducing the concentrations of 2-series PG, fish oil ingestion also results in a 10–50-fold increase in 3-series PG in vivo. Although similar in structure and stability, the 2-series of PG is considered to be more mitogenic and proinflammatory compared with the 3-series of PG. However, studies directly comparing the effects of 2-series vs. 3-series PG on cellular functions have not been reported' ―Bagga

Which you'd expect, since the in vitro studies of David Rose hadn't shown this one to promote tumors. Also, this biopsy study has risk ratios of between 0.40 and 1.10 for eicosapentaenoic acid vs prostate cancer:

godley.png

Table above can be rightly considered more reliable that a simple dietary recall study because it represents the fatty acids determined from the patients red blood cells. Like the meta‐analysis of the dozens of rat feeding studies, linoleic acid is shown the most carcinogenic. Since eicosapentaenoic acid appears to prevent cancer through simple competition with arachidonic acid—for cycooxygenase mainly—I don't see how it could have an effect on a linoleic acid free diet; it needs something worse to inhibit to be beneficial. In that case of no linoleic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid would just contribute to lipofuscin—especially in the presence of iron—and be liable to spontaneous O₂‐adducts. There are also the lipoxygenase enzymes to consider which produce other eicosanoids. There could be a leukotriene product of eicosapentaenoic acid as well.

Not everything is cancer; arthritis isn't cancer. Shotguns, alligators, and blowtorches can cure cancer if used properly. If something has shown to prevent cancer, this alone says little about its potential to contribute to other diseases. Stearic acid is another fatty acid which has also been consistently shown protective against cancer, but cannot form lipofuscin—in addition to being incapable of eicosanoid formation.

'Lipofuscin, or age pigment, represents an intralysosomal polymeric material that cannot be degraded by lysosomal hydrolases, nor be exocytosed. It originates from autophagocytosed cellular components that have become oxidized outside or inside the lysosomal compartment. Its continuous accumulation over time within postmitotic cells, such as neurons and cardiac myocytes, has been recognized for more than 100 years, but only recently it was suggested that amassed lipofuscin may be hazardous to cellular functions.' ―Terman

So based on the rat studies, David Rose in vitro cell studies, and Godley's biopsy study, you wouldn't expect eicosapentaenoic acid to form a very carcinogenic prostaglandin. Here are some quotes from the study assaying the carcinogenic potential of prostaglandin E₃:

'Aberrant expression of COX-2 has been implicated in the etiology of a number of cancers. The mitogenic and proinflammatory functions of COX-2 are linked primarily to exaggerated synthesis of PGE. Interestingly, PGE₂ has recently been shown to amplify its own production by inducing COX-2 expression in various cells.' ―Bagga

Cycooxygenase‐2 is inducible (like iNOS) and is upregulated by a few select cytokines. I can only suppose interleukin‐6 would be that cytokine (I would imagine the acronym below abbreviates: nuclear factor interleukin six: a transcription factor activated by interleukin‐6):

'Two NF-IL-6 sites and a cyclic-AMP response element (CRE) are present between –724 bp and 7 bp of the COX-2 promoter,' ―Bagga

They both act to amplify themselves by producing more cyclooxygenase‐2, but prostaglandin E₃ is much less potent. Prostaglanidin E₃ is less potent by every parameter tested;

'Interestingly, when cells were treated with AA (10 M) and EPA (10 M), the 3-fold increase in PGE₂ synthesis observed with AA alone was decreased by 50%.' ―Bagga

cox2.png

'Both PGE₂ and PGE₃ stimulated the secretion of IL-6 in RAW 264.7 macrophages. However, the effect of PGE₃ was, once again, significantly lower than PGE₂ in inducing IL-6 secretion in macrophages.' ―Bagga

'However, PGE₃ is less potent compared with PGE₂. At all concentrations tested, PGE₂ induced COX-2 up to 4-fold more than PGE₃.' ―Bagga

cox3.png

'Although PGE₃ also induced COX-2-dependent luciferase activity, it was less effective at inducing COX-2 promoter activity compared to PGE₃.' ―Bagga

The common belief that only arachidonic acid can produce prostaglanins is wrong. Charles Serhan appears correct, and wasn't pulling our chain; eicosapentaenoic acid does have a cyclooxygenase product, and this is called prostaglandin E₃. However: this prostaglandin is mild compared to prostaglandin E₂, apparently having less binding capacity on the prostaglandin E receptor due to an extra kink it its tail (at carbon‐17).

Terman, Alexei. "Lipofuscin." The international journal of biochemistry & cell biology (2004)
Serhan, Charles N. "Unorthodox routes to prostanoid formation: new twists in cyclooxygenase-initiated pathways." Journal of Clinical Investigation (2001)

Godley, Paul A. "Biomarkers of essential fatty acid consumption and risk of prostatic carcinoma." Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers (1996)
Rose, David P. "Effects of dietary fatty acids on breast and prostate cancers: evidence from in vitro experiments and animal studies." The American journal of clinical nutrition (1997)

Bagga, Dilprit. "Differential effects of prostaglandin derived from ω-6 and ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on COX-2 expression and IL-6 secretion." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2003)
 

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